LokTung(Wanda) Tsang's ePortfolio

I almost finished my 120 hrs interning in Captiv8 Promos. I enjoyed working in the office and people there are nice. I felt really comfortable working there. My supervisor, Juan, was willing to take time to teach me stuffs that I didn’t know and understand.

During the internship, I also found myself improve in different way especially in time management. I remember the first two weeks when I was interning, I could only finish three to four projects in the 7 to 8 hrs of work. But now I could handle at least 6 or more projects/mockups a day.

Working as an intern also taught me how to deal with real client and understanding their needs. Many of the clients didn’t know what they really want and wanted us to help them out. Since we worked in the design department, we didn’t have much opportunity to connect with the client directly. We would get email from the sale person and worked on the ideas based on what the sale person said. We then had to build on the basic ideas and added what we think was the best fit for the client. I usually gave client a few different choices of design and let them picked one or two for me to work on and that always helped with the final design.

Overall, I thought it was really helpful to work as an intern before graduate. It gave you an opportunity to adapt the real world and I really learned a lot while working.

Today I was assigned to create a step and repeat banner for CFP Foundation. The size of the banner is 8’x12′. I wasn’t sure what a step and repeat banner was until my supervisor explained to me. He reminded me that since the logo files we had were vector files, therefore when we could do it 8 in x 12 in instead to avoid big size file. He also showed me how the banner would look proportionally in real life to give me idea when placing the logos. Since this was the first time for me to work on a banner, I did some research on the size and placement. I found a useful website to help me with this project.

http://www.stepandrepeatla.com/design/patterns/

I came up with 3 different sample and our client picked the last one.

Sample 1

Sample 2

Sample 3

Today I went to the office as usual but no one from my graphic design department were in the office. They informed me from email that they were in a show and they would send me works from email to work on. Michael, from my department, assigned me to create a flyer showcasing the glow in the dark embroidery (light gray cap) and printing (black cap) processes we could do. He wanted me to send him previews while I was working.

My first idea was to have some vector figures wearing the caps as a display. I sent the image below to show him my processes and he told me to focus more on the caps and gave them like a Day/night or yin/yang type of style.

At last I came up with this design since the product  was for nightclubs, resorts and other fun places. I made the caps bigger and used back and white to represent day and light.

I think one of the hardest thing working through email is the communication part because sometimes the instruction part may not be clear. I have to email back and froth to make sure if I am doing what my supervisor require.

Today my supervisor asked me to design an announcement to inform their client that they were moving to a new office. He said I could do whatever I wanted to do and just be creative. I immediately came up with one idea in my head, which was to use a memo to represent office but it didn’t come out as playful as I expected. Below was my first design.

Then I did some research on “we are moving poster” on google and found out that most of them used boxes or moving truck as their main theme. Therefore, I decided to have to person holding a box to represent moving and put their logo on the box. I sent this to my supervisor and he liked it a lot because of the playfulness.

Today I worked on a few different projects and one of them was taking photographs of their products for their online portfolio. Since I have been working in a photo studio for almost 5 years, I felt confidence receiving this project. Captiv8 set up a small studio and 2 lighting for me to work on. Since it wasn’t that professional, it took me a little longer to edit the photos. I cropped, retouched, and also did some colors correction in photoshop. The photographs came out great and my supervisor was proud of it.

I recently worked on a logo redraw project for NCPD. NCPD wanted to have their logo on some products but the logo file they provided was too small and pixelated. Therefore, Juan wanted me to redraw that. The logo was a bit complicated since it included graphic as shown below. It took me around half an hour to finish tracing the graphic but what took me the most was fining the exact font to match the logo.

I was having a hard time finding that exact font to match their logo, therefore, I asked Mike, who also worked in the Graphic Design Department, for helped. He gave me a tip on how they usually worked on redrawing logo, which was to trace the letter instead of finding the right one. He mentioned that the font of the logo would not be changing so it was better to trace them instead of finding the font. From this project, I learned that sometimes you have to think differently and it will save you lots of time. I also think that it comes from experience.

On February 22, I was assigned to create some table cards for a Sweet 16 party. As client required, the table cards had to use an art decor style and each table card had to be different quotes from what the client provided. Since I had no idea on where to start, I went online and did some research on art decor design. After I got some basic ideas, I started to work on Photoshop. The most challenging part of this project was to deal with different among of texts within the same design because some quotes were very long and some were very short. At the end, I was able to finish all table cards in 2 hours.

I saved each files individually and suddenly, Juan stopped me from saving them. He told me that it would take up too much spaces and times if I saved them individually. He then showed me on how to use Layer Comps which I thought it was really useful because we often had to show multiple compositions of a page layout for client. With Layer Comps, client could  view multiple versions of a layout in a single Photoshop file. Although I thought I knew Photoshop well because I used it often when I was working in the Photostudio, there were still some tools that I didn’t know and I would have to learn.

February 12 was my first day of work. I was told to dress casually. First when I got to the office, Juan, my supervisor, helped me to set up my computer network just to ensure that all my works would be shared to all the department.  Then he introduced me to all the colleges from different department, including sales and business.  After the brief intro, he settled me on a seat, which was an open work area.  Then,  Juan assigned me a few tasks to work on, which would also help me to get used to the pace of workload.  For example, replacing a logo on a product or photo editing.

Our department’s lunch hour was from 1p.m. to 2p.m..  After having lunch, Juan assigned me another project, to design a t-shirt.  The client provided some ideas and would like me to elaborate based on that.  There were some difficulties while I was using Illustrator, since it wasn’t my most frequently used program. Then I asked Juan for help and he showed me on how to use the tool from Illustrator. I finished this project in 3 hrs, which was unexpected. I think I should work on my time management so that works would not fall behind.

I selected this internship because Professor Nicolaou recommended this company and mentioned that Juan was a very talented young designer. Also, I was interested after reading the job description therefore I decided to drop them a email.  I got an interview the next day after I sent them my resume and online portfolio.

In the interview, Juan and Mike from the Graphic Design Department reviewed my resume and asked me a few questions based on it. Then, Juan described how the company operated and how the Sales Department passed jobs to the Graphic Design Department. We also discussed the different of time management between school and the real world. The interview was smooth and comfortable. I got offered to work in Captiv8 right at the end of the interview. I think I am very lucky to work with them because they only hired one intern so I hope I will do well.

In this semester, I will be interning in Captiv8 Promos located in 57 E 11th St #5a, New York, NY 10003. It is a small business company doing promotional products and logo merchandise. Some of their clients include Arizona Ice Tea, Verizon, Skechers, Estee Lauder, The NBA, and many others. Their main goal is to create, design, and source logo merchandise that best suite their client’s individual needs. They also design flyers and posters to help company promos. I believe I will learn a lot in this company since this my first internship doing something related to design. I am looking forward to it and also very excited to work with them.

https://captiv8promos.com/